06 November 1994

Young Love

Love is the most fun you can have without laughing.
- Anonymous

When I was in junior high I realized, after the initial rebuffs,
that it was going to be years — an eternity to a thirteen year old —
before I got laid. When I got old I would have a son, and I would tell
him what I went through, so that it might go a little better for him. I
even kept a diary. Now I'm not your father, and you're not my son. My
diary I'll keep to myself. In its place I substitute my thirtysomething
thoughts on my teenaged days.

As a teenager I was a human becoming more than a human being.
This fact, this launching of myself toward adulthood, conditioned all my
relationships, intense or casual. Falling in love under those
conditions was like trying to move into an apartment in a skyscraper
before the floors were poured — lots of pitfalls and construction noise.
In choosing a girlfriend I was choosing a self to try to be —
developing a sense of self that was genuine because it was mine, rather
than my parents'. I was also measuring my self-worth — seeing what kind
of girl I could trade myself for. With the young ladies' help I was
doing the urgent and creative work that all teenagers must do — I was
creating me. And I loved whom I wanted or needed my girlfriends to be
more than who they were, or were becoming. Those who did not reject me
reciprocated in kind.

Thus my first criticism of high-school romance: the emotions are
intense because the hormone levels are high and the psychological needs
are great, but real intimacy under such circumstances is nearly
impossible. And my first praise of it: by finding out how difficult it
is to achieve intimacy, I came to value it and to understand what I was
willing (and unwilling) to sacrifice for it.

Besides love, intimacy, and a sense of self, high school romance
is largely about sex, whether or not the desire is acted upon. In my
experience of this phenomenon (through my own escapades or those of my
friends and acquaintances) we used our sexuality to experiment with new
behaviors (Did you get to first base?), to assert our emotional
independence from our parents (What's the matter, are you afraid?), to
gain social status (He can't be a fag — he's dating someone!), and
self-confidence (Whatever she wants, I can handle it.).

All of this emotional loading may heighten the intensity of
sexuality but tends to diminish its other qualities, an idea which may
be lost on adolescents, who rarely appreciate that sexuality has
dimensions other than intensity. The quest for intensity often leads
teenagers into relationships that are emotionally — and occasionally
physically — abusive. There is nothing quite like "first love,"
especially when one is in love with a beautiful or handsome emotional
roller coaster jockey.

And what if despite all odds, the teenager makes some fleeting
contact with the real person, the "inner child" of the other? Sometimes
one finds the love of one's life. My relationships followed the far more
usual course, ending because we were growing teenagers who grew apart.
And then, because I had been changing so fast at that age, there was no
normal state of being for me to return to. I couldn't go back to being
the old me, because the old me was a kid. In that sense, I never "got
over" my teenage romances. I just moved on after a couple of years, when
I realized that the state I was in was as normal as I was going to get.

I don't know what of this you might say to your teenagers, in
addition to the usual drug, pregnancy, and venereal disease information.
Maybe that, despite the message of popular culture, they might look to
God for the affirming love they often seek from each other. Maybe just
that it might do them more good to look for a close friend rather than a
lover. But teenagers tend to talk more than they listen, and to do
risky things because they need to prove themselves and because they're
too young to appreciate how risky they are. That's why they're used as
soldiers.

Oh, well. As Jimmy Durante used to say, "God bless you, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are." Or was it just "Good night?"

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I'm a Christian and a retired weapons scientist, vocations which have sensitized me to some of the ways in which the world is dangerously insane. So, on 4 July 1996 I founded the Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua, which is moving to this blog.